Dry Bones in the Valley: A Novel (20 page)

From the kitchen, I listened with mounting alarm as Aub wangled my fiddle into some offshoot of A with the bottom two strings skewed down. But then he began to play, slowly and in mixolydian. If you don’t know mixolydian, then maybe you’ve heard a tune that seemed to move between major and minor without settling on either one, a tune that maybe made your hair stand up. That could have been in the mixolydian mode. Aub had the fiddle tucked low into his abdomen, and at first I thought it had to be “Hail on the Barn Door” or “Squirrel Hunters,” basically the same tune with different emphases. But coming to the end of the B part, he tumbled down into a lower, much darker figure than I’d expected. It was a melody I felt I’d always known, though I hadn’t heard it whole before. He finished the tune and I asked him what his name for it was.

“‘The Still Hunter,’” says Aub.

“‘The Still Hunter.’ Huh. Any words to it?”

“Don’t recall. You got a drink?”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s eat something.”

We sat at the table and I let him finish his soup in peace. Since he didn’t have all his teeth, I figured he’d appreciate eating something soft. He spackled his English muffin with butter and then dropped it whole in his soup bowl to soak. He ate efficiently, looking around every now and again.

I stood and pulled my bottle of scotch down, poured a small glass for my guest and one for myself. “Been a long day,” I said. We drank in small sips. Aub, probably used to sweeter spirits, coughed a bit. He finished quickly, and pushed his glass toward me across the table, in a clear request for more. I obliged. “That’s all, though,” I said. “We got to get you back to your cousins’.”

“Ah. Take me home. I don’t want to go down there.”

“I would. Except we don’t like the idea of you up on that farm all by yourself.”

“But I ain’t.”

“Ain’t what?”

“Helen been coming on up the ridge sometime.”

“Helen.”

“Seen her hanging frocks down by the water.” Aub brought the glass shaking to his lips. “She leaves me jug wine.”

“Helen. You talk to her? Talk to Helen?”

He nodded. A long moment passed, and he spoke. “I see her voice, like lightning in the sky. I try to keep her. She goes where she will.”

I couldn’t follow. “Aubrey, where does Helen live?”

This seemed to confound him. He didn’t answer. He drank.

“I was up on your land today,” I said. “On the southeast corner, there’s a wild rosebush. You know it?” This seemed to bring him back, but then he turned away from me, like a child. I pressed him. “There’s a rosebush and a headstone.”

“Never mind about it,” he said. He refused to meet my eyes.

“You’ve got to tell me, Aub. Something so we don’t have to go back there. Otherwise we’re going to have to go see for ourselves. To dig.”

The old man’s eyes widened. He stared into his glass a moment, then swept it off the table and raised his voice. “Never mind, that’s all! Never mind! Let her rest!”

“Who, Aub?”

“My love,” he said, and began to cry. He heaved awhile, eyes and nose dripping. I asked him questions that he didn’t answer. He had wrapped himself in some ancient grief, and was gone.

THE RIDE TO
Kevin and Carly’s was dark and silent, with the old man’s gaze fixed in blackness. I had time to think. But I was stuck. The thought that kept my mind spinning was, the water had risen. Over so many years, the swamp had crept up the bank, likely not noticeably at first. But steadily. And then one day Aubrey Dunigan, dressed in his finest shabby clothes, would have paced through the woods to tend this hidden grave. He would have moved carefully down the trail he’d worn into the slope, past the rocks where they rose out of the earth, and he’d have found that the path to that grave had been drowned. I thought about the very first time he would have put a foot in that cold blue-brown water to get to the love he had buried there. Had he taken off his boots and socks, and rolled up his trousers like a boy? How long before he found the secret way through the stone, and crawled like an animal?

I shook my head to clear it.

Getting from my truck to his relatives’ front door, Aub wanted none of me, and neither did Carly, who thanked me perfunctorily, but fumed when I suggested that a man who isn’t locked up in a basement has less of a reason to escape. “We’re putting this behind us,” she said. “First step is getting him tested in Scranton. Doing it tomorrow. You can rest easy, Officer, Aub won’t be in our care for long.” The door shut, not exactly in my face, but nearly, and I was content knowing that at least Aub didn’t die in a ditch. Though I wished he’d been able to tell me more. We’d have to dig. I idled in the driveway long enough to leave a message with the sheriff’s department.

I pulled away and drove into the gathering night. Yes, I wished I’d been able to get an answer. Then again, I know what it’s like to lose a person you love, and I don’t often want to talk about it either. Almost as bad is when you lose a place you love, which I expect was much on Aub’s mind. I knew about that too.

SO. BEFORE I
got hired to police Wild Thyme Township, Pennsylvania, I served Big Piney, Wyoming. Small town, Big Piney. Pinedale was the biggest nearby town, a town I’d grown to love for its associations of romance and freedom, and just everything. Much like Wild Thyme, nothing too much happened out in Big Piney. Domestics, burglaries, and drugs.

Polly and I had bought a little house on the outskirts. It was a one-story cabin-style home you often see out West, newish and not beautiful, but meant to sit in the landscape as though it had always been there. We couldn’t afford much in the way of land, but open space meant a lot to both of us. The place we found had five acres of grass and sage, a stand of aspen, and part of an irrigation ditch, complete with a winch-operated gate and water rights. The house was on a wide rolling plain with just a few other homes in view. We could afford it if we both worked, and the first time the wind came over the grass, well. We thought we’d hit the jackpot. Best of all, it had a partial view of the Winds, the kind of view you could fit in your scope: neat, chiseled gray. Perfect. We bought it.

Never mind that over the rise where we couldn’t see was a natural gas wellhead. The drilling had long been completed and the frack pool filled in, but there remained a white storage tank like a wedding cake as big as Jesus, and a compressor station that sounded as bad as an airport some nights. It was what we could afford and, we reasoned, someone had built there and lived there, so we could too.

Poll and I would often hike in the Winds. She loved those mountains. Me, I liked when you reached the summit with a view spread out, and you couldn’t help feeling something pulling you farther in, to the next peak and the next. I sought that the way I enjoyed working up an appetite before a big dinner. What Polly liked was the in-between, driving or walking in the foothills where you felt cradled in the folds of land with sage and lodgepoles and aspen, all that green and washed-out red and yellow rising into the sky. She often said the in-betweens didn’t get enough credit compared with the peaks. It was on such a hike that Poll collapsed sideways against a fallen tree, her face gray, her lungs heaving but never seeming to pull enough in, and we noticed she had a problem.

This was around the time that the Mexican cartels were beginning their push east, taking over the methamphetamine business in rural areas. Yeah, Mexican cartels. They’re out there, and they’re not the kind to leave revenue streams untapped. And they’re still coming east, by the way, so Holebrook County get ready. Back then, in Big Piney, I was pulled into a coordinated effort with the DEA and attached to the Sublette County Sheriff’s Department. But I came to find out that it was just to do the usual shit that they no longer had time for—patrolling, speed traps, issuing summonses, and the like—now that they were part of this task force. I remember it as a frustrating time: too many hours, too many night shifts, boring work, but enough money to keep ahead of the mortgage.

Poll and I began to argue about the place. In the daylight hours, when she spent the most time out-of-doors, she would complain of splitting headaches. In bed she’d dry-cough all night, cursing the compression station. I’d urge her to go to the clinic, which she did many times, with no answers or positive results. Once, she got lesions from her hands all up her arms—open sores the size of nickels that overstayed their welcome by a week and then disappeared as mysteriously as they’d come on. I suggested it might have been an allergic reaction to something she’d touched in the wild, poison oak maybe.

You see, I felt loyal to the cabin; we’d made a commitment to it and it felt like the home I’d dreamt of since back when I was sweating my balls off in the 10th. And while I was unsettled by my wife’s ailments, to me, that’s all they were, a series of separate symptoms with no pattern. Secretly, I’d wish she would handle them a little more stoically. The doctors were turning up nothing, and the temptation was, in my most secret thoughts, to feel Poll was being overdramatic. Because she was unhappy about me, or something else. This is hard to talk about.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN,
drawing me into the Heights. There were long threads to tug on up there, and some of them were bound to lead to George. Tracy Dufaigh’s disappearance made me uneasy, and Jennie Lyn’s suggestion of a killer close to George had me wondering. I meant to find them, one or both. The gauntlet of staties guarding Old Account Road had long since been sent home, and I jounced my way into the ink-black forest with no interference.

Number 1585 Upper Sloat was tucked back from the road in a little depression in the thick of the woods. The lawn was neatly landscaped, almost finicky, with a long line of carefully placed stones marking the border of the forest and a small statue of the Virgin Mary looking over a decorative pool. On one side of the house was a prefab shed and a garden patch enclosed by chicken wire. How anyone managed to grow anything in the shadow of those trees was a mystery. Nothing about the tidy little home suggested the presence of a party girl like Tracy. There were a couple lights burning on the first and second floors. I stepped up to the front door. Hung on the frame was a knocker in the shape of a woodpecker perched on a tree trunk; you pulled a leather cord and its beak knocked on the piece of wood. I tried it but got no answer. I rapped on the storm door and a dog bellowed once, and was silenced.

It was not Tracy Dufaigh who answered, but a large man with white hair. He wore an undershirt that showed off faded tattoos on both arms. One of them looked like the insignia to a fire company. His index finger was tucked in the middle of a paperback novel. He tilted his head back and peered at me through half-glasses on the end of his nose.

“Evening,” I said. “Looks like I may have the wrong house. My name’s Henry Farrell. Looking for Tracy Dufaigh.”

“Good luck with that. Francis Dufaigh,” he said, indicating himself. “Tracy’s father.”

“Pleased to meet you, Francis. And sorry about the hour—”

“What’s she done?” He spoke softly, with a hint of something fierce.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just have some news. I’d like to check in.”

“She’s not at home.”

“Any idea where she might be?”

“Listen, my wife’s already in bed.”

“I’m sorry about the hour. I’d love some help reaching her. If you have any idea—”

“You said she’s not in trouble?”

I shook my head no and opened my hands.

The man sighed and I caught coffee breath. He checked behind him, in the direction of the staircase. “Come on in.” He led me through a living room decorated with framed needlepoint sentiments and hook rugs in brown and orange. The stereo’s dial glowed green and a country record spun on the turntable, its volume low, the Nashville Strings weeping. We passed into a small kitchen where a dishwasher rumbled, and a mastiff lolled on a plaid dog bed, its head on its front paws. The kitchen smelled like dog. Francis pulled out a chair for me at the table and took the one opposite.

I opened my mouth but Francis stopped me with an admonishing finger. His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. “My wife,” he said. “Upstairs. Can we keep it down? She doesn’t want to hear it.”

I nodded. “Tracy’s not in any trouble,” I repeated.

“Listen, she showed up a few weeks back to collect her boots and clothes, a couple other things. She’s gone.”

“Any idea where to?”

“I’m telling you I don’t know. Ain’t seen her. Don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”

“She was alive and well as of yesterday.”

“Oh? How’d she seem?”

“Fine.”

“Fine. You know more than I do.”

“Look, Francis, with respect, I wonder why you asked me in, if you have nothing more to say than that. Whatever it is—”

A flash of exasperation crossed Francis’s face. “‘She’s not in trouble.’ Sure. What do you know? She’s out with these hillbillies, taking crystal and . . . carrying on. Her mother and I tried. Whatever’s keeping her out is stronger than we are. She’s been a grown woman for some time, but she ain’t a grown-up yet. And you. What do we pay taxes for, the kind of hogshit going on up here?”

I ignored that. “Any particular friends that you know of?”

“Yeah,” he said heavily. “Fellow named Pat McBride is the latest. You know of him? In your professional life, maybe?”

“Yeah.” McBride was the guy we had a warrant out on, whose lab had been in the way of the SERT team and the sheriff. The connection was unexpected. “Somewhere out on Westmeath Road, right?”

Francis looked at his broad, lumpy hands on the table. He showed them to me. “In another life,” he said, closing his hands into fists. “Hey. Maybe the last thing I’ll ever do in this one . . .”

“Let’s not get carried away,” I said, knowing I couldn’t rush off at that moment, but feeling a terrible urge to get moving. I looked at the aging man across from me. “It’s not for me to say, but . . . I don’t know, Francis, it seems like Tracy had a good upbringing.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Well, it wasn’t always the palace you see here. And I, I spent some time away from the family. When Tracy was growing up. Several years.”